Peppadews, Parties & Pippin

Guys, I'm not really feeling much like writing yet today. I think my brain isn't turned on quite yet this morning, due to the fact that I've had zero coffee. This is going to be an interesting day if I don't get some sort of caffeine pumping through these veins sometime soon. But now that I'm typing a little bit, my brain is waking up and you just might get a "real" blog post out of me. Well, a real weekend recap that is...

Friday
We started the night by picking up my Jeep from Costco, after getting new tires, only to find a piece that should have been attached, sitting in my front seat. Luckily my man is great at not only baking cookies but also working on my car! After it was all fixed, we headed up to Thomasville for the Victorian Christmas celebration. When we first walked up we saw these pretty gourds that had been carved out, and little nativity sets put inside them. So lovely! We grabbed a couple of cupcakes from Lucy & Leo's and then walked around but there wasn't too much to do, so we decided to head on back to town, and get dinner in Tallahassee.

When we got back, we decided to eat at Backwoods Bistro! It's relatively new, and only been open for a few months or so, but we know one of the owner's so we figured it was definitely time to check it out. And it was delicious! First we split an appetizer - Hurricane Battered Shrimp, that came on skewers with a remoulade dipping sauce, and these were so yummy. Then we split The Beast Burger - the burger patty is stuffed with onions, mushrooms, and peppadew peppers, with bacon and cheddar cheese on top, served on what is basically a super soft, giant dinner roll. Oh man this thing was delish! But I'm glad we split it, because it was quite a huge beast. I would definitely recommend this place, and I can't wait to go back and try something new, because their specialty pizzas sounded really yummy :)

Also, this was new restaurant #6 of my goal of 6 before my birthday! So that's one more thing I get to cross off my goal list of 25 Before 25! A quick recap of my 6 new restaurants were: 101 Restaurant, Taste Budz Cafe, Monk's, Up In Smoke, Georgio's and Backwoods Bistro. I liked this goal so much, I've decided it will be a yearly goal, to try one new one every month. So here's to 12 new restaurants in 2013!

Saturday
I got to sleep in a little bit, which was nice for a change! Then Jeff and I went to a graduation party for one of his friends who just graduated from UCF. Then we made a couple of stops at some cute stores, and headed to another graduation party for one of my friends who just graduated from FSU! We had some great food, played Pictionary  and just had some fun times at both of the parties. But, I was a huge slacker and have no pictures from either party... lame sauce.

Sunday
I woke up with a horrible headache, so I went back to sleep and had to miss church yesterday morning. I finally got up and took some Tylenol, and started feeling better after eating a bagel. Around 2 p.m., I finally convinced myself to shower and get dressed, and I headed over to Jeff's house. We split a Turkey Tom from Jimmy John's and then went to Walmart with his mama for some gift cards. Then it was their church's Christmas dinner party, so we enjoyed good food and some Christmas songs, and we wore matching hats :)

Not our greatest picture ever, but ya know.... oh well.

After the dinner, we went back to his house, and continued our personal LOTR viewing party and watched the second half of "The Fellowship of the Ring", and then the first half of "The Two Towers."  And I gotta admit, I was always really skeptical of these movies and never wanted to watch them because I thought they would be boring, but they're actually quite interesting, and I'm already looking forward to getting to watch more of them! (And my reference to Pippin in the title of this post, is for one of the tiny Hobbits in the film, for those of you who haven't seen the movies and therefore probably didn't get it) And during the movies, I took some time to do my nails, & I'm loving the way they turned out :)

Well look at that -- I did end up writing a decent weekend recap post! You're all welcome, since I'm sure this was really all you were hoping for on this dreary Monday morning... But, this Monday starts a regular 5-day work week, followed by a lovely couple of days off for Christmas! Thank the Lord for that! I'm of course looking forward to the time spent with family, but I'm not quite ready, gift-wise. I guess I better step to it this week, so I'm not rushing around like a mad woman this weekend trying to finish everything up. Are y'all done with all your Christmas shopping? Please tell me there are others who still have more to do!

P.S. - Linking up today with: Covered in Grace, Glitter & Gloss, Sami's Shananigans & Synfully Delicious.